I don’t see why a 24-month runway doesn’t qualify as immediate financial danger, particularly when there doesn’t appear to be any hope of reversing the losses on the horizon. Self-driving cars certainly aren’t coming in 24 months, and Uber’s original plan of driving out all competitors so they could charge monopoly prices isn’t going to happen in 24 months either. I’d say they’re in crisis mode.

I don’t see why a 24-month runway doesn’t qualify as immediate financial danger, particularly when there doesn’t appear to be any hope of reversing the losses on the horizon. Self-driving cars certainly aren’t coming in 24 months, and Uber’s original plan of driving out all competitors so they could charge monopoly prices isn’t going to happen in 24 months either. I’d say they’re in crisis mode.

Call me a cynic; but when the two things you have going for you are "generally well regarded UI/UX" and "fares too low to be profitable"; the world might not be encouraging you to get rid of a bunch of engineers...

I don’t understand how Uber loses money. What exactly is costing them so much money. They are basically google maps and find my friends combined with a billing provider. The technology can’t cost that much to manage. They pay their drivers a small portion of each ride and don’t have to pay car insurance or for fuel. What are they spending billions of dollars on?

I don’t understand how Uber loses money. What exactly is costing them so much money. They are basically google maps and find my friends combined with a billing provider. The technology can’t cost that much to manage. They pay their drivers a small portion of each ride and don’t have to pay car insurance or for fuel. What are they spending billions of dollars on?

Uber spends $1.5B per quarter on sales, marketing, and administration. That's more than double what they spend on engineering, operations, and support.

I don’t understand how Uber loses money. What exactly is costing them so much money. They are basically google maps and find my friends combined with a billing provider. The technology can’t cost that much to manage. They pay their drivers a small portion of each ride and don’t have to pay car insurance or for fuel. What are they spending billions of dollars on?

I don’t see why a 24-month runway doesn’t qualify as immediate financial danger, particularly when there doesn’t appear to be any hope of reversing the losses on the horizon. Self-driving cars certainly aren’t coming in 24 months, and Uber’s original plan of driving out all competitors so they could charge monopoly prices isn’t going to happen in 24 months either. I’d say they’re in crisis mode.

24 months is an eternity: Wall Street is incapable of thinking or planning any more than 3 months into the future. Kick the can down the road, business as usual, and indulge in some “profit taking” just as it’s about to burn all to the ground.

I don’t understand how Uber loses money. What exactly is costing them so much money. They are basically google maps and find my friends combined with a billing provider. The technology can’t cost that much to manage. They pay their drivers a small portion of each ride and don’t have to pay car insurance or for fuel. What are they spending billions of dollars on?

Well, Uber ATG is enormous and enormously expensive. They're also subsidizing every ride and moreso in expansion markets.

Though I agree. It's always a bit surprising to me that all of Uber isn't about 30 Engineers, 15 Lawyers, 10 Marketing Managers, 5 Executives, and about 1,000 low-end Field Reps. They might have to start heading that direction if they want to exist in 3 years.

I don’t see why a 24-month runway doesn’t qualify as immediate financial danger, particularly when there doesn’t appear to be any hope of reversing the losses on the horizon. Self-driving cars certainly aren’t coming in 24 months, and Uber’s original plan of driving out all competitors so they could charge monopoly prices isn’t going to happen in 24 months either. I’d say they’re in crisis mode.

I don’t see why a 24-month runway doesn’t qualify as immediate financial danger, particularly when there doesn’t appear to be any hope of reversing the losses on the horizon. Self-driving cars certainly aren’t coming in 24 months, and Uber’s original plan of driving out all competitors so they could charge monopoly prices isn’t going to happen in 24 months either. I’d say they’re in crisis mode.

A 24-month runway is huge. They can stem the losses overnight by jacking up prices; keeping prices low is all about buying up market share.

I don’t understand how Uber loses money. What exactly is costing them so much money. They are basically google maps and find my friends combined with a billing provider. The technology can’t cost that much to manage. They pay their drivers a small portion of each ride and don’t have to pay car insurance or for fuel. What are they spending billions of dollars on?

Well, Uber ATG is enormous and enormously expensive. They're also subsidizing every ride and moreso in expansion markets.

Though I agree. It's always a bit surprising to me that all of Uber isn't about 30 Engineers, 15 Lawyers, 10 Marketing Managers, 5 Executives, and about 1,000 low-end Field Reps. They might have to start heading that direction if they want to exist in 3 years.

It seems like it should be a perfect rent-seeking operation: get labor to eat their own expenses, avoid regulation, and take a vig off the top on every ride. And yet they have not even done that.

Personally, as someone who rides a bike to work every day, the death of Uber can’t come soon enough.

I think it involves underselling the existing ride paradigm until you control the market and can then charge what the market will bear.

The main problem with that idea is Uber's business model, it's not that expensive to just build a new rideshare app. It doesn't require the infrastructure that traditional cab companies do. Uber was already outcompeted by Di Di in China so badly that Uber China was bought out by them.

I'm completely ignorant on the subject matter of software and development so excuse me if this is absurdly stupid, but why does Uber even need the thousands of engineers/developers that they have right now?

I'm completely ignorant on the subject matter of software and development so excuse me if this is absurdly stupid, but why does Uber even need the thousands of engineers/developers that they have right now?

They're really bad at self driving cars and their business model depends on them being really good at them.

I don’t see why a 24-month runway doesn’t qualify as immediate financial danger, particularly when there doesn’t appear to be any hope of reversing the losses on the horizon. Self-driving cars certainly aren’t coming in 24 months, and Uber’s original plan of driving out all competitors so they could charge monopoly prices isn’t going to happen in 24 months either. I’d say they’re in crisis mode.

A 24-month runway is huge. They can stem the losses overnight by jacking up prices; keeping prices low is all about buying up market share.

Um...

There's this thing called "competition" that Uber doesn't quite grasp (or is in the grasp of - YMMV on that).

If Uber ratchets up prices, Lyft sees an increase in business, because their prices are lower.

The issue is that Uber tried to privatize the profits and socialize the expenses. That only really works if they have a few congresscritters on retainer and are a lot bigger than Uber is. If they had the congresscritters, they could facilitate Uber having a monopoly on the "gig-economy" driver market (sort of like the ISP's do - everyone has an exclusive region).

But they don't, they have to compete with Lyft (and others) and Lyft isn't trying to create autonomous vehicles to corner the market nor building overly lavish HQ's all over hell while paying out hundreds of millions in C-level bonuses.

The funny thing is that they COULD compete if they didn't have this "rule the world" mentality.

If you don't count the self-driving car division, Uber shouldn't be more than a 50 person operation. I worked at a startup with a twice as many software platforms to support and we had 50 people at our busiest with half that team being engineers. There's really not a very good excuse for the way they run their business, it's embarrassing.

Uber hires a lot of engineering interns, and the semester is just about up. I wonder if the hiring freeze affects them? If they backed out at the last second a bunch of people I know are going to be in a rage.

If anything they should hire more developers and push to get out an autonomous vehicle fleet faster. As that is clearly the way for them to hit a break even point, and then become profitable.

Anything that delays that should be set aside. Keep eating the loss to keep the brand relevant and the app installed on millions of devices, and make it up later when you are paying those robots cars nothing an hour.

If anything they should hire more developers and push to get out an autonomous vehicle fleet faster. As that is clearly the way for them to hit a break even point, and then become profitable.

Wouldn't they save a lot of money if they just researched autonomous vehicles and got rid of the ridesharing business? I don't see any possible benefit from it.

This Uber's preoccupation with autonomous vehicles always seemed strange to me. They are not positioned better than anyone else to develop the technology or to take advantage of it. It simply amounts to them eventually abandoning their current business and getting into another one.

If anything they should hire more developers and push to get out an autonomous vehicle fleet faster. As that is clearly the way for them to hit a break even point, and then become profitable.

Anything that delays that should be set aside. Keep eating the loss to keep the brand relevant and the app installed on millions of devices, and make it up later when you are paying those robots cars nothing an hour.

The "nine women working together can make a baby in a month" theory.

Although I'm actually more intrigued by the "autonomous cars have no operating costs" theory than how you get the cars autonomous in the first place.

I don’t understand how Uber loses money. What exactly is costing them so much money. They are basically google maps and find my friends combined with a billing provider. The technology can’t cost that much to manage. They pay their drivers a small portion of each ride and don’t have to pay car insurance or for fuel. What are they spending billions of dollars on?

One of the things that is causing them to bleed cash is that rides are waaaaay underpriced, and have been decreasing in many markets for a couple years. My buddy who does it part time used to get just about $1/mile, now is lucky to get $.55. The rides are artificially low, meaning people pay less, meaning less cut for Uber. Coupled with increased marketing, uncontrolled $5-$20 off ride coupons (but still have to pay the drivers), it doesn't look good for their long term strategy to make money, whatever it may be.

Something I'm thinking that they initially hoped to so was outpace Lyft, purchase them, and have the market to themselves to charge higher rates than what they currently are in order to make cash. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, and they are at a race to the bottom and will soon bleed out.

If anything they should hire more developers and push to get out an autonomous vehicle fleet faster. As that is clearly the way for them to hit a break even point, and then become profitable.

Anything that delays that should be set aside. Keep eating the loss to keep the brand relevant and the app installed on millions of devices, and make it up later when you are paying those robots cars nothing an hour.

I don’t know why Uber thought this was a good plan. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to own or lease a car, even if you exclude the sunk cost in the billions for R&D to automate them. Meanwhile, currently Uber pays their drivers as low as $2 an hour, and the driver bears all the costs of owning and maintaining the vehicle.

I don’t know why Uber thought this was a good plan. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to own or lease a car, even if you exclude the sunk cost of R&D to automate them. Meanwhile, currently Uber pays their drivers as low as $2 an hour, and the driver bears all the costs of owning and maintaining the vehicle.

Uber successfully answered the question "can you become very popular by offering a good or service for less than it costs to produce or operate?"